Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday October 07, 2013 @01:56PM
from the this-is-the-first-I've-heard-of-it dept.

dryriver writes "From the Guardian: 'Cabinet ministers and members of the national security council were told nothing about the existence and scale of the vast data-gathering programs run by British and American intelligence agencies, a former member of the government has revealed. Chris Huhne, who was in the cabinet for two years until 2012, said ministers were in "utter ignorance" of the two biggest covert operations, Prism and Tempora. The former Liberal Democrat MP admitted he was shocked and mystified by the surveillance capabilities disclosed by the Guardian from files leaked by the whistleblower Edward Snowden. "The revelations put a giant question mark into the middle of our surveillance state," he said. "The state should not feel itself entitled to know, see and memorize everything that the private citizen communicates. The state is our servant." Huhne also questioned whether the Home Office had deliberately misled parliament about the need for the communications data bill when GCHQ, the government's eavesdropping headquarters, already had remarkable and extensive snooping capabilities. He said this lack of information and accountability showed "the supervisory arrangements for our intelligence services need as much updating as their bugging techniques."'"

There's a reason these programs are kept secret (along with their budgets) from the general "civilian" government. It's because they're huge money pits. They're pork. Free money for security services contractors. It's not some boogeyman new world order shadow conspiracy for power.

There's a reason these programs are kept secret (along with their budgets) from the general "civilian" government. It's because they're huge money pits. They're pork. Free money for security services contractors. It's not some boogeyman new world order shadow conspiracy for power.

It's a much, much, older and familiar monster. Greed.

Funny, no one has suggested a new world order shadow conspiracy for power.

While all this surveillance is partly about money, that's not the whole of it (as I suspect you already know). Knowledge is power. These surveillance powers have already been used to conduct industrial espionage, intimidate political activists, blackmail public office holders and to provide secret evidence in criminal cases (mostly related to the drug war). All of these things are beneficial to the powers that be. In short these powers are used by the existing power structures to increase and enhance their power. This is why they are kept secret even from the people supposedly providing oversight.

I agree that this is a huge money train for all kinds of defense and other government contractors, and their stakeholders in office. But it's also about increasing power. So it might not be a "new world order shadow conspiracy", but the result is not too far off from that.

So its not a "new world order", but just the "existing world power" conspiracy? While on the surface that sounds exactly like what a NWO conspiracy nut would like, somehow I doubt it. I think they need to rename what they are afraid of. I'm not exactly sure if they even know. A reporter went to the Bildenburg conference, to try and figure out what they were protesting, but only got vague references to fluoride related mind control and "awareness".

At least they were doing what they said they were doing. What was the purpose of Occupy? Why Occupying stuff/places. That's something I, the potential protestor can understand and get behind. Who's streets?, our streets!

Bildenbug is all " new world order/vacines/ cancer mind control grrr". Just can't get behind that. Need to simplify and stay on message.

"utter ignorance" is the default state of every legislative body in the world. Politicians tend to be the biggest blabbermouths in the world. Telling them about every covert national security program would guarantee that everyone, friend and foe, would have all the details in about 15 minutes. And believe it or not there are some things that do need to be kept secret when it comes to dealing with other countries. Every other country in the world does the exact same thing. If every government in the world cl

Snowden is still a hero. At considerable personal cost he has exposed a domestic enemy of the people. Not only for the U.S. but for the U.K. as well. If he committed any sort of Espionage, it was FOR the people of the United States, the only legitimate power here.

There's a reason these programs are kept secret (along with their budgets) from the general "civilian" government. It's because they're huge money pits. They're pork. Free money for security services contractors. It's not some boogeyman new world order shadow conspiracy for power.

It's a much, much, older and familiar monster. Greed.

I agree, but the other reason it was kept a secret because it's wrong, and they know it. They don't want the law makers knowing about it because either they will shut it down, or take it away.

Or the law makers will do what they have been doing before they knew about it, nothing.

"Yes, Minister" is used as an orientation manual. Apparently, new cabinet ministers and even backbenchers in both the UK and Canada (and probably Australia) use them as such. There is some really good material in the programs about what tactics the bureaucracy can use to stop things, and how to overcome the resistance.

Remember: Just because the civil service follows your instructions - does not mean anyone wants the result!

His own reputation might be less than exemplary at this point, but I don't see that his ministerial position was particularly relevant here. Any MP, minister or otherwise, is the highest directly elected representative of their constituents in our government system. As a basic principle of representative democracy, it seems very dubious to me that anything like this should be "off limits" to someone in that position, or to people in that position acting collectively by asking questions in Parliament. I can accept reasonable arguments for keeping the specifics of individual cases or ongoing operations on a need-to-know basis and not routinely disclosing them to a few hundred MPs, but not the underlying principles and the existence of systemic practices.

...Any MP, minister or otherwise, is the highest directly elected representative of their constituents in our government system. As a basic principle of representative democracy, it seems very dubious to me that anything like this should be "off limits" to someone in that position, or to people in that position acting collectively by asking questions in Parliament...

Look at the history.

Security Service, SIS and GCHQ are DIRECT descendants of the equivalent services which were running during WW2. At that time there were many things which the state was doing which would certainly NOT be presented to Parliament - for obvious reasons. Encryption capabilities, military strategy, operational data - many things would be kept secret. For good reason. And Parliament would not expect to be told about these matters.

In most cases the state structures set up at that time (for instance, Bombing Target Policy committees) were quite happy to close themselves down and return to civvy street when the war ended. Not so MI5 and MI6. They were involved in the diplomatic politics during the restructuring of Europe and seamlessly went into the Cold War. During the 1950s to 1970s many MPs were suspected of Communist sympathies - they would certainly not be told anything about the activities of the intelligence community.

By now that mindset is rock-solid. These people have always lived in a world where they were (secretly) defending democracy against the Nazis or the Reds. This stopped, suddenly, around 1990. Only 20-odd years ago. But they are still trying to work as they always have - in secrecy, with an unlimited budget, fighting on behalf of their country against an implacable and highly organised foe.

That foe no longer exists. So they are simply making him up. Kid hackers become Master Cyber-criminals, in the pay of the Chinese. Individual political activists with a grudge - Muslim or Chechen - who set off a bomb, become shadowy agents of a vast world conspiracy instead of individual murders who should be dealt with by the police. We bomb local politicians/gang leaders in the Middle East who are fighting their own local wars, and pretend that that we are saving Western civilisation.

Yes, it's partly the money. Working in the intelligence community is a comfy, well paid position with no competition. But it's also this mindset. Everyone who does not support you whole-heartedly is suspicious, and should not be told anything. It's standard World War paranoia - institutionalised....

Yeah, you put in words what I was thinking for a while now. It's obvious that these problems aren't specific to the NSA or GCHQ. Rather they're due to a cold war mindset that too many senior civil servants and politicians seem unable to break out.

GCHQ has been hacking Belgacom to spy on the EU in Brussels. WTF? Why?! If they want to know what's going down in the EU then they can just..... go ask. I mean the UK contributes its fair share of money to the EU, so what possible benefit is there to treating it

The question is just as in the USA possibly he didn't read all his briefing papers and understand what he was being told. The lib dems have form in saying what people want to hear ask any Labour or Conservative activist and they will agree with me

From Casablanca:
Rick: How can you close me up? On what grounds?
Captain Renault: I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
[a croupier hands Renault a pile of money]
Croupier: Your winnings, sir.

We are all absolutely certain that his being jailed for covering up traffic offences, surely the most egregious criminal evasion in modern British history, is completely unrelated to his opposition to unlimited and possibly unlawful spying on all classes of British subjects.

I keep hearing astonishment at how so much web traffic can be stored with relative ease.

Sure, it's going to be a lot of data, but a whole lot of that data is duplication, and where there is duplication there can be compression. And where it's not, even at level 6/7 you can identify significant commonality (facebook user home page) and simply store the delta.

It's not like they're storing every byte sent and received by every Internet user at all.

This is the big question. Now that you know you were duped, spied on, and the citizens you are supposed to be serving have been taken advantage of, what will you do?

My guess is nothing, it'll be USA part 2. A few bands will file suit, everything will be classified secret, and nothing will happen. It's not just the US that needs to be considering a revolt, the UK is just as bad as we are in nearly everything.

Interesting to hear Russel Brand talk about his own country here in the US, since we really get little information that is not "party line".

He's a comedian. A comedian's job is to make you laugh, and the easiest way to do that is Satire. It's harder to control comedy and satire than printed media. I can give you a hefty list of US Comedians that use satire to show you how shitty the US was becoming and has become, starting with George Carlin, and including Lewis Black.

Russel Brand is a jerk, do some research. He dumped Katy Perry with a text message because she wasn't ready to be his baby farm. With Jonathon Ross he phoned an Actor live on air and told the audience and the answerphone that he had fucked the Actors granddaughter. He is indeed a tool.

Nobody on the National Security Council has denied his claim that the NSC was never informed. Just to re-iterate that, THE PARLIAMENTARY BODY TO OVERSEE THE SECURITY AGENCIES WAS NEVER TOLD ABOUT THEIR MASS SURVEILLANCE OF BRITS BY THE SECURITY AGENCY.

Not least because the laws to make it legal were never passed.

Ahh, but the NSA and the President knew. Probably creeps like Feinstein knew, but not Parliament.

Now we have a situation where the NSA can spy on government, newspapers, any British comms and GCHQ a

Why would they tell every minister everything, or every Congressman everything, when far too many of them have their own agendas from an extreme third party, or can't keep it in their pants, or are in and out in 2 years.

He was a privy councillor and member of the National Security Council, so would have been security vetted. There's ten members of the latter at the moment, so it's a fairly exclusive club.

Let me try to open your eyes, under the assumption you want them opened.

How does knowing about the existence of a program equal in depth knowledge of the details in the program? There is no such magical connection, though there are many people that will tell you there is.

For example, knowing that the ATF is buying guns in the US and giving them to foreign people is something every congressman should be aware of. They should have all had a chance to critique the spending bill, and deny such a foolish act b

Step 1) Run a secret, illegal surveillance program with no oversightStep 2) When a terrorist attack is averted, locate actionable intelligence about it within the data previously gatheredStep 3) If and when the public face of the government (those little people who have to stand for elections) finds out about your secret, illegal surveillance program, show them the data from Step 2 and claim the attack would have succeeded without your secret, illegal surveillance programStep 4) Accept some toothless, ineffective oversight measures and continue as you were

There's nothing complicated about any of this. Ignorant legislators behave like frightened masses of people when you frighten them. They'll do anything they're told to do by anyone who projects authority and control over a scary situation. Whether it's impending market collapse, terrorist attacks, or the next killer plague, frightened masses will let you do just about anything you want if you promise to keep them safe and convince them you can do it.

This quote combined with what the NSA/GCHQ have done reminds me a lot of "...or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm." The state should serve us, yes. The state should prevent us from harm, yes. But there is a point at which we are no longer served by harm prevention, and the NSA has clearly passed it. Even if they started off with good intentions initially (as implausible as that may be), by simply doing their jobs well they have come over to the dark side, and that's pretty interesting to me. There aren't that many good things you can do so well they start becoming bad.

Which UK citizens make a big deal out of being British subjects? The few Irish without Irish citizenship who are still considered British subjects?Anyways the Queen is only part of the government with the major part being Parliament and the major part of Parliament being the House of Commons who are elected by UK citizens and responsible to them. And the Queen herself serves the people and if she screws up she can be removed. As recently as 1936 a King was encouraged to quit as he had fascist tendencies and

Anyways the Queen is only part of the government with the major part being Parliament and the major part of Parliament being the House of Commons who are elected by UK citizens and responsible to them. And the Queen herself serves the people and if she screws up she can be removed. As recently as 1936 a King was encouraged to quit as he had fascist tendencies and it was considered that he wouldn't serve the people well.

Though for a full-on kicking out of a monarch — as opposed to a gentle "jump before you're pushed" — you've got to go back to 1688. That triggered a (mostly minor, except in Ireland) civil war.

We're not, we're British Citizens as of 1983, and were formally Citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies since 1948. The term British Subject applies to a very small minority of people who weren't from places that were members of the Commonwealth before 1948. See this article [wikipedia.org].

The no longer accountable or controllable aspect is really where the GCHQ was generationally.
The UK could offer very little to the GCHQ but limits on budgets and endless 'new' ideas about crime fighting and using call transcripts/logs in court.
The GCHQ would then have to invent amazing ways to present its call transcripts/logs in court without exposing methods, brands, experts or the embarrassing totality of Soviet spying.
Generationally the GCHQ was closer to the NSA, US mil and their clean well funded